What To Know About Your Child’s Exposure To Porn

Source: Fight the New Drug

Studies are showing that almost half of kids between ages 10-17 are watching porn online, and nearly 1/3 of teens are sending their own nude photos to each other. These stats only show a glimpse of the fact that our generation is experiencing the total dehumanization of sex, where connection and emotions are being completely separated from physicality, with no thought to what sex actually means.

But How Much Porn Are Kids Really Watching?

Porn is the obvious culprit, and it’s not going anywhere any time soon. Trying to make porn go away would be like trying to make cell phones go away - it’s just not going to happen in our digital age. Even so, that doesn’t change the disturbing fact that our mainstream media is constantly promoting sex as a selfish, detached act, and that perception has infected our entire culture. As we all adjust to the never-ending availability of porn in today’s society, the real question comes to light: just how much porn are kids watching?

A University of Montreal study found that 90% of all porn now comes from the internet. Like we’ve known for a while now, the day of porn DVDs and magazines is dead. In 2010, tech blog Gizmodo puts the number of porn sites at 24.6 million, which is roughly 12% of total web sites. As for the nature of the content, there are entire “tube sites” (think YouTubes of porn) filled with every category or genre of porn imaginable and not-imaginable. These sites contain literally millions of porn clips that are available for free with just the click of a button.

The University of Montreal study reports that boys start searching for pornography by age 10 (!!!). A University of New Hampshire survey of kids ages 10-17 found that 42% said they had viewed online porn in the past 12 months, and 66% of those said that they didn’t go searching for it in the first place. To further the problem, it seems this porn culture has created a need to produce and spread the material. A University of Texas Medical Branch study of students in southeast Texas found that 30% of American teens are now emailing or texting nude photos of themselves to others.

How Do You Know If Your Kid Is Looking At Porn?

The question is, how do you know if your kid is watching porn? Given the stats, we think there’s a pretty good chance they are watching it. And if they aren’t, their friends are. It’s only a matter of time before they’re exposed to porn, and that’s a frustratingly sad reality. But it’s not one we can or should ignore.

Bottom line: porn is everywhere. We are living in a digital age where the most hardcore porn possible is available for streaming 24/7/365 on a device that fits into our pocket. Even if parents have the most advanced filters in place, today’s teens will still have no problem accessing graphic content if they want to. For boys, porn poisons attitudes toward women, creates unrealistic expectations in relationships, and even conditions and rewires how their brain works in response to sexuality.

This easy access to porn is making it so young boys are growing up on a steady diet of hardcore porn that is teaching them an extremely skewed and unhealthy version of sexuality. Having nothing to compare it to, they live their formative years with a fantasy of what sex is, making it so down the road when they actually get between the sheets themselves, they are in for serious disappointment. For the first time in medical history, boys as young as 16-years-old are reporting a phenomenon known as porn-induced erectile dysfunction.

For girls, porn influences their thinking to be all about performance and appearance. It creates unrealistic expectations of what will feel good to them, sexually, because what looks fun in porn isn’t always fun in real life. The accessibility of porn is making it so girls believe it’s okay for their significant other to watch it on a daily basis, and to even welcome it in their relationships.

Having been told that porn is the ideal, they’ll strive to look like, act like, and perform like the porn stars they see. They won’t realize that they’re comparing themselves to an unattainable and unrealistic mass-produced fantasy. For girls in porn culture, sex doesn’t become about love or intimacy, it turns into a test of hotness and talent.

The Best Ways To Take Action

How parents address this issue with their kids is based entirely on their parenting style. We believe education and awareness are the best weapons any way you look at it. Through the uncertainties of how to approach kids about explicit content, one thing is for certain: porn is harmful and research is proving it. Parents should be teaching their children one important and fundamental lesson: porn does not show real sex, and porn is not real love. Pornography is a hollow counterfeit that resembles an outward appearance of a sexual relationship but is the furthest thing from real intimate relationships.

If you’re a parent who wants to be an active voice in your child’s sex education, we recommend downloading our free guideline book that will help you navigate the porn conversation.

Society has come a long way since the days of fold outs in Playboy magazine. Unfortunately, porn is here to stay, so it’s up to us to raise awareness on its harms and be educated on the issue. Nothing will diminish its presence in our technological world, but with an open dialogue and a scientifically-backed perspective, parents of the Playboy generation can help their kids of the PornTube generation navigate the online minefield they walk through daily.

How The Porn Industry Wins

The porn industry would love to expose kids as young as possible to the world of explicit content. They want to make lifelong customers out of every new generation. They win if we decide not to talk about it, because staying silent about porn means letting our kids grow up thinking it’s okay. We aren’t cool with that. Let’s take a stand and fight for love, and fight for our kids’ awareness.

To educate yourself further on the harm of the disease that is porn, you can listen to Internet Pornography, by Dr Albert Rossi: Part 1 & Part 2.